Legislative Action

Fiji: Water firms threaten to close

The Fiji Times Online. By Ashwini Prashad -

WITHOUT an immediate suspension of new taxes imposed on the industry, some plants will have to shut down, says the bottled water industry.

Industry spokesman Jay Dayal said: "The bottom line is that without immediate suspension of the tax, some bottlers will probably have no choice but to shut down their operations completely regardless of what Cabinet eventually decides to do."

"It will be too late for them," Mr Dayal said.

"And on FIRCA's contention that it has not received enough information from the industry, to my knowledge, all bottled water companies spent dozens of hours last week providing information to FIRCA and the Minister for Finance," said Mr Dayal.

"We believe that they have sufficient information to determine that these onerous taxes, if left in place, will effectively shut down Fiji's bottled water industry for good," he said.

Fiji Islands Revenue and Customs Authority chief executive Jitoko Tikolevu said none of the bottled water companies had fully submitted all relevant information and documents.

"The purpose of the requested information was to assist FIRCA and the Ministry of Finance in analysing the bottled water companies' claims of the negative impact they perceive will be created by the new tax to their business operations," Mr Tikolevu said.

"Without these relevant information, it was not possible to do a thorough analysis of these claims and making appropriate recommendations to Cabinet," he said.

At its July 1 meeting, Cabinet approved the imposition of 20 cents per litre export duty and 20 cents per litre excise duty on bottled water.

FIRCA has given bottled water companies until today to provide all the information it has requested in full for examination.

The Ports Authority lost $30,000 a week when Fiji Water was stopped from exporting earlier this year.